Fourteen patients who were treated within the first two months of infection were later able to stop combination antiretroviral therapy without an HIV rebound, according to Asier Sáez-Cirión of the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

While all 14 still have HIV, in most cases it can only be detected with ultrasensitive laboratory tests and is undetectable by standard methods, Sáez-Cirión and colleagues reported in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

But in all cases, the infection appears to be under control without the use of drugs – the definition of a functional cure, which unlike a "sterilizing" cure does not completely get rid of HIV.